Day 16
~22.2 miles
Blue Lake to Tuolumne Meadows

At the end of the first day of this leg, we thought we had a good chance of finishing in 3 days, instead of the 5 days we packed food for. But after yesterday’s slow going miles, we’d pretty much abandoned that idea. We still had ~3 off trail miles and ~19 trail miles to get to Tuolumne.

From our camp at Blue Lake, it was straight up several hundred feet to Blue Lake Pass. The father and two sons were camped nearby, and the father got up early to watch what route we chose over the pass. He’d come over to our camp last night asking if we had the guidebook info for this pass (he was missing it); he’d spent much of the day scouting for a route over it, but didn’t like anything he saw. We checked. All Steve had to say was, “the ascent to the pass proves amaizngly easy, involving grassy slopes, low-angled slabs, and short stretches of stable talus.” So much for any help there!

We had no problem finding a route up, and I would guess there are many ways up that pass that work just fine, depending on comfort level, of course.

After a few miles working our way down into a valley, we met up with real trail to drop way down to Lyell Fork of the Merced River (not to be confused with Lyell Canyon!). Coming over Blue Lake Pass, we’d noticed some smoke settled down in the low valleys off in the distance. We’d heard from a pair of High Route SOBOs last evening there was smoke, but didn’t get any info about the fire causing it. By the time we climbed out of Lyell, it was getting thicker. And by the time we rounded the corner to start dropping down to Lewis Creek, we couldn’t see to the other side of the valley. We were supposed to have views of Half Dome from here. Not happening today. We felt a bit concerned with such thick smoke, and not knowing where it was coming from.

But we saw a slow trickle of people coming toward us (from Tuolumne) who didn’t seem to be concerned, so that made us feel better that we weren’t walking into the fire. The walk up Lewis Creek was pretty neat, the river flowing over enornous slabs of granite pretty much the whole way. Vogelsang Pass seemed like it would be really pretty if we’d actually been able to see anything.

By the time we got to the long, gentle downhill of Rafferty Creek, I was really tired. It wasn’t a particularly hard day, but the cumulative effect of pushing it pretty hard every day seems to be catching up.

In the end, we just kept going and got to Tuolumne Meadows after all. We walked around in the chaos for a bit until being directed to the backpackers’ area of the campground. So many people. So loud. Ugh, why didn’t we just camp a couple miles short of here? Why? Oh, the General Store and promise of burgers, that’s why. Sadly, the grill was already closed (it was only 7pm!). I still had a dinner in my pack, but opted for a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli and an orange Crush instead of my rice and beans. Too lazy to heat it up, I ate it cold straight from the can while listening to some JMTers brag about their daily mileages. But I got to sit at a picnic table, so that made it ok.